My friend used to have 2 pygmys that shw would breed....i LOVED going to her house and playing with the babies...we would be sitting on the ground with on in our laps and WHAM! Get rammed by 4 more haha. Goats are AWESOME and theyre soooo much fun....but noisy.. ohmygosh they can be very noisy.

Yes! Try 200 goats and another 100-150 sheep oh lord when they moved it was crazy we had to tag and write down every goat and makr sure their papers were in the right stack and not all were very friendly haha. Best part was bottle feeding :)Posted via Mobile Device

Hahaha I'm hoping the goats I'm getting are going to be a bit more laid back since they're both breeds/breed mixes that are known for calmness etc. My fingers are crossed! noooo sassy pygmy goats! :P

Less than 24 hours til the goats are home!!!!!!!

And, on that note, THE PEN IS DONE. AND I HAVE PICTURES. <--- there is no chance, at all, that I'm excited...
The pen, I measured it at the end, is officially 20ft by 16 on the outside, with the stall (12x12) added on. So, those goaties get a grand total of 464ft. Lucky ducks!
On Lacey's side, I pulled a dumb maneuver and removed one of her step-in posts. Cool story: when it hasn't rained in weeks and you have soil with a high clay content, good luck stepping-in step-in posts. I decided that I liked where that post had been after all but no luck getting it back into the ground=dumb.
Hopefully if I soak the area with water I'll be able to get it back in tonight...

Anyway, pictures!

Both stalls! (sorry about the glare)

The "front" of the goat pen... I ran the white tape through the fencing because I figure that'll hopefully make it less invisible to Lacey. She seems to have a pretty easy time differentiating between light and dark so hopefully that'll help her.

The goat stall!

Lacey's stall!

The divider...I'm really pleased with how that turned out. This side is the "human door" (I made a small, goat/bent down human-size, door on the other side for when I let the goats out eventually - so Lacey can't get into their stall but they can as they want). The white tape is pretty much the thing holding it up. There are clips on the end of the tape so it's easy to clip to the shed+it's easy to go in and out.

Lacey! She was grummmmpy today. I did, however, neglect to give her her "lunch" for quite a while (she didn't follow me down like she usually does, when I started working and I got so absorbed in what I was doing that it was 3pm before I knew it) and so she didn't get her painkillers/anti-inflammatories for quite some time. I'd be grumpy too.

"Hmmmm, maybe I like you..."

Battle wounds. And SO MUCH DIRT. I had to wash my hands THREE times before they were clean.

That is all.

Tomorrow, GOATS. AND GOAT PICTURES. There will be a picture thread. Do not panic.

I really like them too! I didn't think I would like them this much but I TOTALLY do.

__________________________________________________ _____________

I don't know what has gotten into Lacey but last night she pretty much went nuts. I'm thinking that perhaps she's going into her final heat of the season which is traditionally a really hard cycle for her.
Basically, she busted out of her stall twice while I was preparing her food, was climbing the "ledge" side, nearly fell totally down when she took a wrong step and slipped down the ledge, near-missed running me over a couple of times, and when she escaped+when I finally released her, she threw her tail over her back and went galloping up to the gate like a nutso horse.

Today she was somewhat better but still super nutty. I ended up cancelling her lesson scheduled for today due to her cray behavior. She would never hurt anyone intentionally but I refuse to risk someone's child when I know L isn't being herself.

She's sooo weird. Tomorrow we're going on a long ride and hopefully she'll work some of that out of her system!

In other news, today Hazel voluntarily let me touch her and actually enjoyed being touched!
Previously she had been on the "you can touch me is you must but I would really prefer that you didn't" side of things. Yaaay her!

She has so many things that need to happen to her. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. Her hooves are unacceptably long, one of the back ones is actually curling under a bit, but the seller said that she wasn't great about having her hooves done so I was previously hoping to wait to do them until we know each other a bit better - maybe encourage better behavior because she knows I'm not a killer... However, I noticed today that she's not totally bearing weight on that hoof/leg so it might be an immediate need. :(
She also needs to be shorn. I just ordered a pair of fancy scissors with a spring in them that are supposed to be "the best" for hand shearing. They should come sometime within the next week. Maaaybe I'll be able to hold off on the hoof side of things until I get the scissors and annoying her 100% all at once...

Atticus is also warming up to me but for him it's more "Is Hazel not looking? Maybe now I can come creep up!"
Hazel's pretty jealous of my attentions and generally runs him off whenever she sees him approaching me. Silly girl!
I'm making a point of spending a little sneaky time with Atti on a daily basis though to hopefully build his trust. I still haven't been able to really touch him but he will approach me when Hazel isn't looking, he'll eat out of my hand, and he'll sniff things I hold out to him. If I really grabbed for him, I could touch him but I pretty much want being friends to be his idea.
I hope to own them both for the rest of their lives and I'd really prefer to start out on the right foot! :)

Anyway, that is all for now. My friends think I'm even more nutty than I was before now that I own goats. I was already "the character" and now I'm a combo "cat lady/horse girl/goat herd/nerrrrd". Shooting for the stars, that's what I'm doing!
But really, if I had a choice of things to do with my life, my life's dream would be to work the land, hang out with animals, and basically be kind of self-sufficient in that way. So in a way, I'm heading for my dream.
I don't know what this says for the rest of my life since I'm only almost 22 (in a week+half!) and have a whole lot more life ahead of me....but whatever comes will be ok...hopefully. :)
Sometimes, this might be weird, I kind of worry that I'm going to die young. I mean, that wouldn't be bad since I believe that I'm going to heaven+resurrection, but when someone my age is already pretty much living their dream... Whatever, not something I need to worry about.

Well, so my laptop pretty much died=why I haven't been around in what feels like foreverrrrr. I realized that after a post about dying young, I probbbably shouldn't just disappear...
Basically, the laptop decided that it's LCD screen wasn't good enough for it anymore so said LCD screen just gave up. That wouldn't be tooo bad (aka too expensive) except for the fact that said laptop had/has a 17inch screen. Replacing the screen would cost THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS. Um, NO.

Soooo now I'm on a 13in screen netbook, uploading photos via my broken camera which is the only camera that has a cord since said netbook doesn't have a card reader... it's great.
Really though, I'm not complaining. At least I do have a netbook available to me (my mom's) and at least I have a camera to farm girl me up a card reader!
Things could be worse, muchhhh worse.

Anyway, things have been going pretty well animal-wise. The goats are coming around and we're definitely friends now.
Poor Atticus is doing battle with some pretty bad worms. I dewormed him on Tuesday so he shoulddd be on the uphill side of things (and he is doing better) but the worms were BAD. Like, one more day=he would have been dead bad.
Hopefully he'll be ok!

On the Lacey side of things, she's just being weird. I wonder if her vision has gone more or something...she keeps stumbling and getting her to eat all her "grain" (aka hay pellets+'medicine') is basically the most impossible challenge everrrrrr. I'm pretty sure it's just something I'm doing that she doesn't like...
Actually, thinking about it, "meals" where she isn't fed Red Cell, she eats it better... However the Red Cell makes her feel sooo much better... Maybe I could syringe it to her like wormer? She wouldn't enjoy that, certainly, but it would get it into her... And next time I buy it, I'm going to buy the pellets for sure and she'll definitely eat the pellets... Hmmm. That might be something to try. Because she NEEDS her medicine stuff and that's probably a lot of why she's been acting weird - she hasn't been getting enough painkillers+anti-inflammatories into herself so she feels normal...

Starting tomorrow night I'll be stalling her at night as well. I had intended to start that earlier but first she was being so nutty and then it got crazy windy Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday and Lacey is freaked out by the wind so I figured it would be best to let her choose where she felt the safest vs teach her how to break out of her stall... yknow, seemed legit.

Also, guess what? Two videos for you!

One of poor Lacey getting shunned by the goats and the other one of the goats trotting. Hopefully once I start stalling Lacey overnight and they have to be close to each other for quite a while every night, they'll all warm up...

And Hazel runs hilariously. Pretty sure it's because she's an old lady and she has all that hair. It's still probably the best though!
[heads up, if you're feeling queasy/sick today, DO NOT WATCH THIS. It's super vomit-inducing with my horrendous camera skills... I guess if you're feeling sick and want to vomit...want a reason not to go to school tomorrow?]

So...nothing reallllyyy exciting has happened but I suppose I can update... ;)

Atticus - turned out his worm situation is even more dire than I initially thought it was. I had to go spend FORTY dollars on basically the most intense wormer of all time. The smallest bottle it comes in is 500ml and guess how much I need to dose Atti with? Oh yeah, TEN ml!! What. On the plus side, it doesn't really have an expiration so I'm all set for deworming goats over the next gajillion years...
He seems to be perking up a bit. Unfortunately, I gave him the wrong dose to start (followed instructions on the bottle which was 1ml per 25lbs and it turned out that really, the bottle is worng and needs to be doubled up - 2ml/25lbs) so I reallly underdosed him by giving him only 2ml (he's 86lbs but I wanted to go slightly under to make sure I wasn't going to kill him via mass worm death). So now I have to wait 10 days before I can dose him again. THEN, in 10 more days, I'll give him Quest which should kill off anything this type of dewormer missed (he either has "Barberpole Worms" or "Liver Flukes" - liver flukes are more likely so the stuff I just gave him is for them, the Quest would be for the BP worms).
Gah. On the plus side, I've started giving him a bit of Lacey's Red Cell everyday and that seems to really be improving his outlook on life (both of those^ worms cause anemia and eventually death via anemia, the Red Cell "fixes" anemia so is my BFF right now). He's a bit perkier etc.
On the bummer side, I had planned to start letting the goats out in hour intervals with the hope of being able to leave them out during the day after I start school next week. TOO BAD HORSES CAN GET LIVER FLUKES TOO. So the goats "get" to stay in for quite a bit longer until they're a bit more worm free. :/
Bummmmmer.

Lacey, I started syringing the Red Cell into her and so far that's been a much much more effective way of doing it. She's been eating her food much more thoroughly, acting like she feels good, and since she really can't see the syringe coming, only hates me for a short amount of time on a daily basis.
I put her in her stall last night and she really seemed ok with it. However, this morning I discovered that she pulled one of the "step-in" posts out of the ground while sticking her head through the gate area. Since the ground is way too hard to actually step-in said post, today I "attempted" to dig a hole to put it in more thoroughly. Um yeah, that hole ended up being probably 6 inches deep after 45 minutes of digging... My current method is that I mixed the dirt up into some sticky mud (we have lots of clay in our dirt here), put the post in the "hole" as best I could, added the mud to said hole, and now it's "curing". So I had to leave Captain Lacey out this evening because currently, that post would not withstand her so much as touching it.
Hopefully it'll be good for tomorrow night. I REALLY want to get her in the habit of being in her stall prior to next week when school starts... I would ideally just use a post-driver and drive a stake in but my neighbors with the driver are gone currently and they left their tool shed locked. Lame, but reasonable. I'm going to try my keys with their lock tomorrow though. It's just padlock and I have a key for a lock of the same brand...
I'm also going to add at least one more strand of tape to the perimeter of her stall area so it feels a bit more "solid". Right now it's only three strands. 4 or even 5 would probably be better for an area I know is under stress.

Tomorrow we're going on a ride! I'm looking forward to it. The last time I rode was last Wednesday when it was really windy and we came back pretty quickly because we got down to the trails and heard branches falling...and didn't really want to die... lol

And, what? Do I have pictures for you??!

So I think this is pretty funny: I'm basically the palest "ginger" ever so this is the first summer, in my memory, where my legs have actually gotten mildly "tan". And, since I wear Chuck Taylor's as my horse/animal shoes, I definitely have a high-top tan line... You can really see it on the left foot between that freckle and that gray circle (from one of the grommets on those shoes).

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